Those who would be president
by Eric Jackson
It's a little less that three years from Election Day 2004, and already
it seems that the preliminaries for the presidential election are underway.
Martin Torrijos is the front-runner for the PRD nomination, but may face a
primary challenge by Panama City mayor Juan Carlos Navarro. Alberto Vallarino
appears likely to run again, though on which ticket is an interesting question.
Former health minister Jose Teran is often mentioned as a possible Arnulfista
standard-bearer, but at this moment that party's nomination looks like a booby
prize and few of the party regulars seem eager to be 2004's sacrificial lamb.
So what do each of these possible candidates need to do between now and
then?
Torrijos needs to show people that he stands for something, and that there's
more to him than just being his father's son. Panama went for inexperience
in 1999, and it has turned out worse than most of us expected. A few months
as an underling in the Ministry of Government and Justice in Toro's administration
wasn't enough to prove that Martin Torrijos is competent to be the nation's
chief executive, and rumors of death threats do not mean that he's doing anything
particularly daring or noteworthy, and wouldn't mean that even if they were
true.
Navarro is doing a reasonably good job as mayor, though both the Moscoso
administration and Martin Torrijos's backers are going well out of their way
to obstruct his administration so as to be able to argue that he's ineffective.
Local and national executive offices are different, and thus questions remain
about precisely which sorts of economic policies Navarro would advocate for
the nation. Would it be a big business orientation like Toro's, or something
a bit more favorable to those who, unlike the mayor, did not grow up in a
wealthy household? Navarro also needs a better public relations operation
--- his style of few words and a solid job performance works well enough,
but journalists' questions to city hall never get answered, even when they
are about things like the schedule of events in municipal parks.
Vallarino has a credibility problem. He talked populist during the election
campaign, but when some of the issues that he campaigned for, like a $500
per month minimum wage, were the center of national debate, we didn't hear
much from him. Moreover, he shouldn't expect to get a lot of votes out of
places like Colon as long as his bank has a reputation for not hiring blacks.
On the other hand, after another two or three more years of the sort of public
mismanagement that we're seeing now, Panamanians may well be willing to hire
a capable businessman like Alberto Vallarino to set things right.
It seems very likely that Mireya Moscoso will kill Arnulfismo as a major
political tendency once and for all. Guillermo Endara's presidency was a failure,
but Mireya's popularity has plunged even more quickly than his did. The Arnulfistas'
possibility of winning in 2004 is remote. Dr. Teran didn't help things by
his immediate threat to bring calumnia e injuria charges against the Oncological
Institute's Dr. Bares, when the latter noted that as health minister Teran
new about the problems with cancer patients receiving radiation overdoses.
Bares was factually correct, and even if it may have been unfair to imply
that Teran is somehow at fault, this country has seen far too much intimidation
in its public discourse. No way, Jose - lawsuits and criminal complaints,
or threats to initiate such, do not add up to a convincing campaign platform.
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